


All the Unasked Questions

by gellavonhamster



Category: A Series of Unfortunate Events - Lemony Snicket
Genre: Don’t copy to another site, Gen, POV First Person, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-02
Updated: 2019-05-02
Packaged: 2020-02-16 05:10:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,796
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18684787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gellavonhamster/pseuds/gellavonhamster
Summary: There was a City, and there were two young men, and there was a grave.Originally posted in Russian as Part 5 of "Группа Пропащих Волонтёров".





	All the Unasked Questions

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [Группа Пропащих Волонтёров](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16039004) by [gellavonhamster](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gellavonhamster/pseuds/gellavonhamster). 



It was B’s idea to visit the graveyard together. He called me on the phone while I was staying at my sister’s place, where I moved to temporarily after my place was damaged by what had been, according to the official narrative, a gas tank explosion (that narrative was false). I asked him how he had found out where to look for me, and he gave me the very name I expected to hear. I felt an urge to drop something along the lines of “I see you and my bride have become quite close friends lately”, but I restrained myself. She was not yet officially my bride anyway, except for in my head which, as experience had shown, was not in consonance with reality on all matters.      

“I wasn’t at the funeral either,” B said. It took me some time to figure out what funeral he meant. “Came back from Montreal just two days ago.”

“I see,” I responded, feeling that it was my turn to say something.

“I was thinking… if you are planning to visit her grave, we could go together. I have a mind to go there tomorrow in the first half of the day. I mean, if you want to.”

“All right,” I said, and immediately got mad at myself. I have been trying to hate B more or less ever since we first met. It seemed appropriate to have little liking for the peer who has been held up as an example to you for a long time, and with clear hints that he shall succeed both as a volunteer and in life as such, unlike some others. Later some other reasons to dislike him emerged, but they all lost ground every time I found myself face to face with him. I didn’t know anyone more amiable and good-natured than him. On that score, he surpassed even my brother, who, for all his positive qualities, was somewhat prone to being a bore, and M, who was a most kind-hearted fellow, but occasionally, let his truly viperous tongue loose. Therefore, that time, like many times before, I did not have the slightest reason to be uncivil, especially since the latest loss our organization had suffered must have wounded him much deeper than me. Clearly, that didn’t mean I was bound to assent to his proposal. I could have refused, referring to some urgent matters, but I realized it only after I put down the phone, having agreed to meet B the next day at one o’clock by the graveyard gate.        

“Going on a date?” my sister inquired, her nose still in a book, and I, being an adult, and with no pillow at hand to throw at her, ignored that nonsense.  

When I arrived at the agreed place the following day, B was already waiting for me. A most abominable rain was pouring, having started already after I left the house, and as I was staring at the black umbrella above B’s head, I couldn’t help thinking: of course he hasn’t forgotten his umbrella. Unlike some others.   

The moment my associate saw me, he hurried forward to meet me halfway.

“Snicket.”

“Bertrand. Have you been waiting for long?”

“No, some five minutes at most. How about you get under the umbrella? I feel like it’s not going to clear up any time soon.”

“No, thank you,” I refused. That was very foolish on my part, and after several steps I admitted it and hid under the umbrella after all. I wasn’t going to take B by the arm on principle, so we just went on side by side, jostling each other with elbows now and then.  

As we wandered among tombstones and maimed stone angels, I kept thinking back to the moment I learned about the tragic development that brought us here. I had only just returned from Puerto Rico, bringing back with me a report on the successfully completed operation, a couple of notebooks filled with writing, and a light stab wound. My brother met me at the port. It was not until two hours later that I was to present myself at the headquarters, so on our way we dropped by a café to get root beer floats. At a certain point, my brother put his glass on the counter, wiped off his beer-foam moustache and said, “L, while you were away, something awfully sad happened. Your chaperone…”

It was a car accident. I had been convinced that Theodora was still driving the same old green roadster, but it turned out she already had another car, the same model but grey. My former chaperone lost control of the car while escaping the chase; the confidential documents she had stolen from her pursuers burned with her. It could be said that Theodora remained a volunteer till the last minutes of her life, and perhaps in these minutes she was a better volunteer than over all those previous years. Back in the day, she was ranked fifty-second on the list of chaperones that included fifty-two persons, and what I had heard about her later suggested that she never achieved any higher rank. However, I was still of an opinion that I had learned a thing or two under her tutelage: for example, that grownups are often unable to see beyond the ends of their noses, or that it is important to recognize at the right time that all the questions you have been asking were the wrong ones. In any case, she was part of my youth, and when we approached the gravestone that bore her name, dates of birth and death, and the motto of our organization – _The world is quiet here_ – I felt as if I was twelve again and it was the first time I faced something actually frightening, merciless, and much more powerful than me.             

Death has circled near me and my associates since our early childhood. _Memento mori_ : such was the motto of the school most of us had graduated from. We often talked about death, often half-jokingly, half-earnestly asked our comrades to make sure our funerals went a certain way; for instance, I remember us promising W to scatter his ashes over the sea. But seeing the grave, laying some already wilting flowers on it, rereading the dates inscribed on the stone over and over again, realizing that the person buried underneath it was not old and could have lived more or less happily for many more years – that was something else entirely.    

The last time I saw Theodora was about a year and a half ago; that said, when I tried to picture her face, I could only remember her the way she looked many years ago in Stain’d-by-the-Sea. Presently I knew that back then she was only thirty-five, which looked to me the beginning of old age then and my own foreseeable future now. I realized I was crying, and crying not so much for Theodora, however egocentric that might sound, as for my own youth and the times when I was less smart, less experienced, braver and bolder. I was crying for my past that could not be returned, for my friends from Stain’d-by-the-Sea who – I was certain about that – didn’t want to have anything to do with me anymore, for my first love who disappeared from my life for ever after I ruined her life, or so she thought I did (and if my sister knew anything about her, then she didn’t tell me, and I didn’t ask). I was crying for that young man who was undergoing his apprenticeship in a dying forsaken little town, and – for all that – for his chaperone the way I remembered her, with a huge thatch of hair and a cheek divided in two by a long ugly bruise that was painful for me to look at. On our way to the graveyard, I didn’t expect myself to cry, but that only proved how little I knew about death – and about life.           

I didn’t turn to face B. I have long become more accepting of tears than I used to be as a child, but he and I were not close enough for me to cry in his presence without experiencing a constant need to apologize for that. I didn’t turn to face him when I heard him inhale loudly, like many people do when they are trying not to sob, and I didn’t turn to face him when he put his palm on my arm just above the elbow and I didn’t turn to face him when I covered his palm with mine. At that moment, his hand was the only source of warmth near me and, as it seemed to me, in the whole universe, but I could not make myself look him in the eye.       

I thought I could ask him about something: after all, who knows when we would happen to be alone with each other again. For one thing, I could ask him if a certain person we both knew had ever talked to him about me. Or what exactly his feelings towards that person were. Or what he was crying for at the time himself – just for Theodora or, like me, for his own past that he just lost the last binding thread with. Instead, I asked him:    

“So what does S stand for?”

That question came out of nowhere – I didn’t fully understand myself why I asked it – and I expected B to answer it the way Theodora would have done it. “Something she would’ve preferred to remain a secret.” “Something she never told me.” “Seriously, Snicket? That’s what you want to ask about right now?”

“Sunny,” B replied. I looked out from under the umbrella to make sure that the clouds had really started to clear away, and then looked at him to make sure he was not delirious. “Sunny Theodora Markson,” he explained with a sad smile. “That was her name.” 

“An unusual name,” I observed. I could understand why she kept concealing it. For a moment I felt vexed – so she did tell him what S stood for – but I told myself off at once. When it came to B, I couldn’t even manage to be jealous of my beloved – I could do without trying to be jealous of our late chaperone.      

“An interesting one. I thought maybe one day…” he began but must have changed his mind. We stood in the rain for a little while, holding our tongues, each of us immersed in his own thoughts. Finally, B broke the silence.    

“We should go somewhere later to drink to her memory. If you want to.”

“All right,” I said again, and immediately got mad at myself again, though less than the day before.


End file.
